Erik Ofgang 2016-02-19 02:32:49
UNUSUAL TALES FROM CONNECTICUT’S COLORFUL PAST
The Critic Who Wasn’t There
In honor of Oscar season, we look at one of the strangest scandals in the history of movie reviews
It sounds like, well, something out of a movie. In 2001, Thomas Nash, then publisher of the Ridgefield Press, a local weekly newspaper in Ridgefield, received a call from a Newsweek reporter named John Horn. Their conversation, and Horn’s follow-up reporting, would ultimately lead to the unearthing of one of the strangest episodes in advertising and reviewing history.
Horn, currently the host of Southern California Public Radio’s “The Frame,” was calling to ask about David, or Dave, Manning. A so-called critic, Manning had effusively praised several films released by Sony-owned Columbia Pictures and had been credited as writing for the Ridgefield Press. Manning had praised the late Heath Ledger of A Knight’s Tale as “this year’s hottest new star!” and raved that with The Animal, “The producing team of Big Daddy has delivered another winner!” Positive quotes from Manning were also included in advertisements for Hollow Man and Vertical Limit.
The problem was, Horn, who had many connections in the film industry, couldn’t find anyone who had actually met Manning.
“I was working on a story about the proliferation of junket reviewers, which are essentially journalists from second-and third-tier media outlets who travel, generally, on a studio’s dime — free meals, flights, hotels — in exchange for giving movies free publicity and enthusiastic blurbs for newspaper, radio and television advertisements,” recalls Horn. “The story I was writing was that the studios’ cynical deal with these junket journalists was devaluing the legitimacy of real critics.”
Horn began calling around to investigate suspected junket critics. “For all of the searching, I could not find anyone who knew who Dave Manning was, including other studio publicists.”
That’s when Horn contacted Nash, who informed him that no one by that name was employed by the Ridgefield Press. Horn knew from the library at Newsweek that there was no other Ridgefield Press, but he still did not realize what was actually going on.
“I was more puzzled than anything, because I couldn’t yet imagine he was a fake,” Horn says. “Then I called Sony. Before the studio returned my call, I got a call from the producer of The Animal, and he said he had nothing to do with Dave Manning. That made me even more curious. So I asked Sony specifically if Manning existed, and the studio said no.”
Horn publicized the scandal in a June 2001 Newsweek article. Manning, as it turned out, was concocted by a Sony marketing executive named Matthew Cramer, who was inspired to use the Ridgefield Press because he had grown up in Ridgefield. He named his fake critic after a friend and used him to rubberstamp praise on films of the studio’s choosing.
Horn’s story created a media firestorm. “It’s something you can’t imagine happening, and yet it confirmed everybody’s worst fears about how craven Hollywood could be,” he says. “There were news trucks parked in front of my house for several days.”
Meanwhile, the Ridgefield Press got a fair amount of unwanted media attention. “[We got] a lot of calls from all over — U.S., England, Australia, probably 20 outlets,” Nash says. “I learned how tiresome journalists can be.”
The news even sparked the interest of then-Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who announced after Horn’s story broke that he was considering issuing subpoenas to get to the bottom of what he claimed was consumer deception. “We give this practice two thumbs down,” he told The Associated Press. “It could be deceptive and misleading advertising.”
Cramer was suspended for a month without pay, but continued to work in film advertising. Efforts to contact him for this story through a past employer were unsuccessful. Cramer’s supervisor, Josh Goldstine, was also suspended for a month without pay. Today, Goldstine is the president of marketing at Universal Pictures.
But there were more repercussions. In the mid-2000s, a pair of California moviegoers launched a class action lawsuit against Sony, seeking redress for people nationwide who had paid to see the films.
Sony ended up settling the suit and was ordered to pay $1.5 million. Movie fans who could prove they saw one of the films praised were eligible to receive their $5 share of the settlement.
Horn stopped short of giving a thumbs-up to the lawsuit resulting from his story. “Anybody who went to see a Rob Schneider movie and were surprised to find out it wasn’t any good shouldn’t be rewarded for their own stupidity,” he says. “The story did keep a lot of lawyers employed for a long time, however.”
As far as the Ridgefield Press, Nash never pursued any legal action. “[It was] harmless to us as a local weekly paper.”
Looking back, Horn says he was able to break the story thanks to luck and good timing. “I think it was a moment in time when, just as the Internet was taking off, you could get away with lies and half-truths,” Horn says. “Hollywood has always been desperate to sell its movies any way it can, and this was (almost) successful because people didn’t have the tools or luck to spot it.”
As to whether advertising in the movie industry has matured in the decade and a half since David Manning made real headlines with his fake praise, Horn isn’t so sure. “No one would ever dare to invent a fake critic again. But if you read reviews from junket journalists today, these ‘real’ reviewers still will give enthusiastic quotes for the world’s worst movies. Because they enjoy the junket gravy train, and don’t want to lose their invitation.”
Published by New Haven Register formerly 21st Century Media Newspapers . View All Articles.
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